Trevor Baseball Camp (Day 1)

Trevor had his first day of baseball camp on Saturday (5/30). His team is the Phillies and I would guess there are about 10 - 12 kids on the team. They set the camp up as "stations" so every 25 mins or so the entire team rotates to a new area all focused on the basic fundamentals of playing baseball...pretty sweet set up. I was also very impressed by the active engagement and participation of the parents, helping field the balls for the kids, keeping an eye on kids, encouraging all the kids to keep trying even when they didn't get everything the first few tries, etc. In addition the coaches did a great job with all the kids.



All in all a good time and Trevor seemed to enjoy most of it; he got a little sad when he was struggling with getting the ball in the "fishnet" and one of the throwing station but a little coaching and persistence helped get him the balls in the net. He said his excited to go back next week (runs for a month of Saturday mornings).

JS

Carver Park Reserve

This afternoon Trevor got to pick what he wanted to do since he was a pretty good helper with cleaning out the Jeep and Nicole's truck earlier in the day. He decided he wanted to go biking at Carver Park Reserve so he and I headed out and left Nicole and Joshua at home. If you never been out there it is a great area with lots of newer paved trails, unpaved hiking trails and even horse trails. There are a couple different picnic areas with grills and a huge sand v-ball court.

We got there at 3:45 pm at the there weren't many people around and we pretty much had the place to ourselves. We unloaded the bikes and headed down the trail...Trevor leading of course. Trevor is still learning that with on-coming traffic he can't ride right down the middle of the trail but he's getting better. Just after Trevor completed a pretty big hill, "huge" by his standards, I heard a metallic banging sound. Turns out Trevor's training wheel was very loose and getting ready to fall off. I told Trev we could take it off and he could try riding again without training wheels or we could tighten as best we could by hand (I left the tool kit at home) and head back to the truck...he took option "B".

We got back to the truck with no issue and I was very proud of Trevor, he did all every hill without any fuss or help and he has been awesome about wearing his helmet whenever he hops on his bike. We loaded up the bikes but he didn't want to go home just yet so we found a bench that overlooked the lake and sat down for 15 minutes, looked at the trees and the lake and then started to head back home. About half way home he fell asleep.

JS

Mothers Day Weekend

While I can't say this was the best Mothers Day Weekend Nicole has ever had it was certainly the most tiring one. Nicole was up way too early on Saturday to head downtown to do a model photo shoot until about 1:30 pm (I have to admit it was worth it since she got some pretty cool pictures).

Saturday late afternoon we found out Joshua was getting his last molar in which put him in a "great" mood (heavy on the sarcasim) and gave him a 103 fever...seemed a bit high for just a tooth coming in but he tended to run a but warmer than most kids when he got his other teeth in so we gave him the Motrin and Tylenol combo for the evening and he was still up about every two hours.

Sunday morning I woke up with Joshua in bed with me, Nicole sleeping on the floor to the right and Trevor sleeping on the floor to the left...WTF?! Turns out Joshua was tossing and turning too much for Nicole so she took to the floor and Trevor had a bad dream so he took the other side of the bedroom floor. After taking it very slow the rest of the morning we all finally got out of the house and made our weekly run to Costco for food stuff. Nicole, Trevor and Joshua all took naps when we got home and I finished up some work. Grilled fillets outside, set up the boys new sandbox and Nicole just got Joshua to go to sleep at 10:02 pm (I think this is the latest he's ever been up...hopefully this won't become a habit.

Have a good week.

JS

Family Sunday

Since today (Sunday 5/3) was just about perfect outside, could have been a little warmer, we decided to take a family bike ride. The trails by our neighborhood are great since we go about 200' from the end of our driveway and we are on the Carver County Trails. We went along the Minnesota River and then headed to downtown Chaska to the ice cream shoppe. Trevor went with vanilla in a chocolate dipped waffle cone, Nicole did rocky road in waffle cone, I did a strawberry with waffle cone and Joshua decided to try all of ours plus he just started having a grabfest with the candy selection...yes, he just started putting stuff in his mouth and yes we paid for everything he touched.

After ice cream we biked to the playground at let the boys burn off as much energy as possible. At the St. John's playground they have this "thing" you hang onto and someone pushes you across this hanging track and it's about the coolest playground toy I have ever seen...Joshua and Trevor love it (I'll get a picture next time were are there).

About halfway home on the trails Trevor started saying his legs were tired to which we educated him that this is how you get exercise...he decided exercise is "not something I like very much", taking after his fathers bad habits...I'll have to work on that one.

JS

Joshua In Drag?!?!?!

Well, it appears one morning Joshua in his usually effort to keep Mommy's days full of laughs he decided to climb up on the kitchen counter, dig through Mommy's purse and proceeded to use her lipstick as facial paint. Had he actually applied the lipstick correctly we'd be a bit more concerned.

Trevor's First Time at Kabuki

Nicole and I decided as a treat to Trevor for being a good kid we'd get a sitter to watch Joshua and Trevor could not only have Mommy and Daddy all to himself for a night he could pick where we go out to eat. After hearing about how much Mom and Dad love "the place that cooks the food in front of you", as Trevor refers to it, he decided he wanted to go to Kabuki in Eden Prairie. He thought the "cheater chopsticks" were pretty cool and even tried a spicy tuna roll (beginners sushi)...although he really just wanted to peel away the seaweed wrap and just eat the rice he at least tried it.

Trevor on the ATV (frozen pond)

Sorry this post is a bit out of chronological order but I just downloaded these pictures from the camera. Trevor found a frozen pond back in the woods at Grandma and Grandpa's house and figured out how to do "donuts". Needless to say this became his favorite thing to do over the winter and he was really bummed out when the ice all melted. Please note he had all of his safety gear on while doing this and the speed govern on his ATV was turned almost as low as it can go so spare me the lecture e-mails on ATV safety, he has done a great job in the last year learning how to properly put on all his riding gear and how to operate his 4-wheeler.